The King who Lost the North
by Mini Mo xx
Summary: For a short story competition The Red Wedding in the King's POV


**The King who Lost The North**

Commotion, there was commotion everywhere; screaming; shouting.

Death was all around the hall, blood and death.

_They will call this the Red Wedding. "The wine will run red" he had said, and now the blood runs redder than the richest wine. _

But even amongst all of the commotion, there was only one thing the King in the North could see: his Queen, the first to suffer the wounded pride. Even from the floor, he could see her bloodied, lifeless body. The pain from his own wounds was nothing compared to the pit of despair she would leave in his life.

He wondered what they'd done to his wolf, no doubt they had butchered him as well; _kill the King, his Queen, his unborn child and his direwolf. Tear down the banners; butcher the Wolves so the Lions can rule. _

He had won every battle, yet somehow, he'd known he was losing the war. He had not avenged his father, saved his sisters nor taken the iron throne. Everything he had set out to do was now in ruins, spilling out onto the cold floor beneath him; deep red and full of regret.

All of this; the death, hurt, betrayal…all because of love. Because Robb Stark, King in the North, fell in love. _Yes, I went back on my marriage oath with the Frey's, but we were here under the guest rights._

King Robb stumbled forward, the pain and the pit in his heart forcing him to his Queen, already lifeless before him. He scooped her up, ignoring the mocking words coming from the Lord of the Crossing, sitting still on the top table, which mere minutes ago was filled with laughing and two newlyweds. Gods knew where his uncle and his new bride were now.

Still, no matter how long he looked at his Queen in his arms, no matter how many prayers he said in his mind to the old Gods, and the new, she did not awaken, not even when he placed his hand on her bloodied stomach, she and their unborn child still gave no signs of life.

His mother was screaming, begging the Lord to let him go, but somehow, the King could not hear her, not over the beating of his weakened and broken heart, he could not hear her over the sound of nothing, the pure nothingness coming from his wife and Queen in his arms. Even if the Lord let him go, Robb knew he would not; not without her, not without his wife and unborn child.

_If I have not got Talisa, if I have not my army, nor my mother, what else for me is there? My sisters are most like dead…my little brothers are dead… I have little friends or allies; I no longer have the North…_

He had told his mother '_love is not always wise; it can lead us to great folly, but we follow our hearts wherever they take us' _and how he wished he had heard the first part. Aye, he knew he was in love with his Queen and he had no regrets about wedding her, but now he had been shot, was like to die, his Queen and army were dead, all his allies' blood pooling on the ground like puddles from a storm and Lord Walder was sitting at the table, watching like he was at a tourney. King Robb could only think of how, politically, he had been wrong. He had made foe from ally and he had lost the war. _I have lost everything, what worth is mine own life now?_

His mother had a knife to the Lord's wife. She would most like die too, the King knew that. No Stark, Karstark, Tully or ally of the North would be left alive.

King Robb placed his wife back on the floor, wishing with everything he had that he could bury her, but he did not have the strength nor chance. He dragged himself up, every single movement requiring effort, every bone seared, but still, he managed it.

"Mother," King Robb rasped, begging his mother to stop. Nothing would work, nor stop his death or the fall of the North.

"The Lannister's send their regards."

The pain was absent; the cold, bleak death emptied his body of everything spare the horror-filled scream from his mother and the betrayal of the man who killed him, before The King in the North joined his wife, and the fall of his Kingdom.


End file.
